Section outline

    • Aristotle's Ethics File

      Aristotle was Plato’s student, so we should not be surprised to see him developing similar ethical views. Still, there are differences of emphasis, points on which Aristotle is more explicit, and some points of clear disagreement between them.

      Aristotle provides formal criteria for our final end—happiness—that closely resemble Plato’s. We do everything for the sake of happiness and do not seek it for the sake of anything further, and we need nothing beyond happiness. The best candidate for something of this sort, he argues, is a full life of excellent rational activity. Some readers think Aristotle has a compound theory of happiness: it is a full life of excellent rational activity, plus external goods such as health, wealth, good looks, and good children. However, Aristotle clearly distinguishes what happiness consists in from what it needs as background conditions, and he thinks happiness needs external goods as background conditions, not as constituents.